Explore Michigan.

A place to start exploring

Explore Michigan began in 2014, after a code competition sponsored by the State of Michigan and local sponsors. It exposed a practical need: parks departments had places worth visiting, but needed better ways to help people discover them and understand what was there.

I founded the product to help close that gap. What began as an iOS app has grown into an app and a website.

From discovery to a day outside

Explore Michigan helps visitors find parks, lighthouses, and outdoor recreation destinations across both peninsulas. People can browse places and activities on the website, or use the native iPhone and iPad app to explore the map, search by place, city, or county, and filter by location type.

Destination photos and visitor details help people decide where to go. Links to official websites, Apple Maps directions, and maps or reservation resources are available where the destination provides them.

Owning the whole product

As founder and engineer, I’m responsible for design, architecture, and development. The work extends beyond shipping an interface: the information has to be useful, and the system has to remain maintainable.

Across the product’s life, I’ve built three connected parts:

• A native Swift application, now refreshed with SwiftUI and Apple’s platform capabilities, including UIKit, MapKit, Core Location, and URLSession.
• A server-side Swift API, built with Vapor and since decommissioned.
• A static website generated from the shared location catalog, keeping visitor-facing pages lightweight.

The refreshed app bundles that catalog for offline browsing. Maps, photos, and uncached documents use network services. The website generates static pages from the same location information.

A product that keeps evolving

The first app launched in 2014. Later updates expanded it to include lighthouses, richer location information, activities, hours, and visitor resources, with accessibility as an ongoing concern.

The recent refresh gives the website and app a more considered presentation, with refreshed maps, lists, filters, destination details, and photo galleries. On iPad, people can browse the location list alongside the map.

Visit Explore Michigan or download the app on the App Store.

Developing a partner program

The app and website are free for visitors. I developed a partner program that helped parks and recreation organizations promote their destinations and generated revenue to support the product.

An earlier Michigan-themed online store closed at the end of 2023 so I could focus on the app and website. Developing the store and partner program gave me experience connecting product design, engineering, and a business model.

What I carry forward

Maintaining Explore Michigan has taught me to think beyond a release. A useful product needs dependable information and a system I can keep working on. Those concerns shape the architecture just as much as the choice of a framework.

That experience is also the starting point for Park Guide, where I’m taking a broader look at how software can serve visitors and parks departments.